The Linux Kernel Code of Conduct Committee Begins Offering Regular Reports

Back in late 2018 when Linus Torvalds went on a sabbatical from kernel development to focus on his inter-personal skills, the kernel added a Code of Conduct. To date there hasn't been much transparency into the Code of Conduct committee that acts upon violations, but that is changing in 2020.

Greg Kroah-Hartman on Friday released a December 2019 report on the behalf of the Code of Conduct committee. This marks of what they hope will be regular (monthly?) reports from the committee on their work.

For last month they received just one report simply described as "insulting behavior in email." Stemming from an investigation, that lone report resulted in "education and coaching" but without shining any further light onto the incident.

At least a lone report for the month on the kernel mailing list that sees thousands of posts per month (from a quick count on their archive, around 9,760 mailing list posts for December).

Previously from the start of the CoC in September 2018 through July of 2019 they indicated three instances of insulting behavior in emails and one case of inappropriate language in the kernel source tree. From August through November there were no reports. In the four earlier reports, they all resulted in the "education and coaching."

So over the past year and a little over a quarter have just been four reports of insulting behavior in the kernel mailing list and one case of inappropriate language (code comments) in the kernel source. Given the kernel mailing list and its thousands of posts per month and thousands of Git commits with comments, these numbers so far show the CoC isn't being abused or causing any sweeping shift in behavior.

The reports and other Linux Kernel Code of Conduct material can be found on Kernel.org.